Healthy mothers, healthy babies – UM Today

by pmnationtalk onDecember 6, 2017114 Views

Project evaluates increasing use of prenatal care by inner-city women.

DECEMBER 5, 2017 — Prenatal care is an important part of keeping mothers and babies healthy. The Partners in Inner-city Integrated Prenatal Care (PIIPC) project was designed to help connect pregnant women with prenatal care in their communities.

Dr. Maureen Heaman, professor in the College of Nursing and the principal investigator for PIIPC, has worked to improve maternal health her entire career. In her work she’s researched the risk factors for preterm birth in Manitoba women and found that lack of prenatal care is one of them.

Despite the importance of this service, Manitoba has regional variations in rates of inadequate prenatal care, with high rates in the inner-city communities.

“We needed to target these areas for improvement and needed to find out why these women weren’t using prenatal care in these areas,” Heaman said.

Consulting with inner-city women, health-care providers and other stakeholders, data were collected on prenatal care and a steering committee was formed to come up with interventions to submit for a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) grant.